2022 Colombian Elections — March 13 results analysis
The Colombian congressional elections and three presidential primaries took place on March 13. I’ve poured over the results and crunched the numbers, and this very lengthy post is all about the results.
Check out my other posts, including a pre-election preview, on my main Medium page.
Please note that the analysis in this post is mostly based on the preliminary, unofficial results of the pre-count, available here, which is subject to change, sometimes significant, in the official final count (escrutinio). Because of irregularities and/or errors, there have been major differences between the preliminary and final counts this year.
Presidential primaries
There were three presidential primaries — on the left, centre and right — with a total of 15 candidates competing.
12.25 million voters participated in the three primaries on Sunday, a record number. In 2018, when there were two primaries, 9.6 million voters participated. This is about two-thirds of all those who voted on Sunday (up from 54% in 2018) or 31.5% of registered voters.
The Pacto Histórico (left) clearly won the ‘inter-primary’ race: their primary, even though it was the least competitive, got the highest turnout: 5.8 million — 47.5% of the overall primary turnout (and 31.5% of the total voter turnout). The winner, Gustavo Petro, won 4.49 million votes. This turnout matches with the Pacto’s own expectations, which was 5–6 million votes.
The Pacto didn’t quite break the 6.1 million turnout of the right’s primary in 2018, which remains the primary with the highest turnout, although Gustavo Petro’s 4.4 million votes makes him the ‘all-time’ primary winner, with even more votes than Iván Duque in his 2018 primary (4 million). The Pacto’s turnout is also significantly higher than the left-wing primary in 2018, which drew 3.5 million votes.
On the right, the Equipo por Colombia’s primary had the second highest turnout, with 4.1 million votes (33.9% of primary turnout and 22.5% of total turnout). This is a successful turnout, although perhaps not as high as they might have hoped for (5 million) and about 2 million votes less than the right’s 2018 primary.
The clear loser was the centrist Centro Esperanza coalition, which had, by far, the lowest turnout of the three primaries: just 2.28 million votes, or 18.7% of primary turnout and 12.4% of total turnout.
It’s not a surprise that the centrist primary was a failure. The Centro Esperanza was never able to overcome its internal divisions to offer a cohesive political vision to the country. The few policy proposals and common visions they did offer were always overshadowed by their internal conflicts and fights, which sometimes took place publicly. In contrast, whatever divisions there were in the left and right-wing coalitions were mostly silenced or managed internally, and by and large the candidates in the two other coalitions often appeared as an actual team, rather than a dysfunctional mess of rivals focused on conflicts which often appeared petty (however important debates on machines, ethical principles or the ways of doing politics might be, they aren’t of great interest to the bulk of voters).
The centrists’ main theme— the fight against corruption — is no longer really original in Colombian politics. In the past, even in 2018, anti-corruption had been the centrists’ key issue but now everybody needs to be anti-corruption, and those most outraged about corruption will be more drawn to a more radical, belligerent, anti-establishment options like Petro or Rodolfo Hernández than the ‘lukewarm’ centrists.
The centrists also misread the popular mood. After the 2019–2021 protests, the crisis in democratic institutions, the pandemic and the resulting recession which erased all progress made in reducing poverty, many people in Colombia, like elsewhere, are eager for more radical changes. The Centro Esperanza remained stuck on a message of ‘moderate’ and cautious change, distant from the extremes, which didn’t excite a lot of people. Petro, even though he has somewhat adjusted his rhetoric and strategy to be more viable than in 2018, still symbolizes the anti-establishment mood and the desire for massive changes to overhaul the whole political and economic system. The right, meanwhile, can appeal to those who are worried and scared about what the left’s ‘radical’ agenda would entail.
Primary results
The winners in the three primaries were not surprising: Gustavo Petro, Federico ‘Fico’ Gutiérrez and Sergio Fajardo. They now become the presidential candidates of the left, right and centre, broadly speaking. All three were the favourites, and Petro was the presumptive nominee from the very beginning in the Pacto. Let’s take a look at each primary in more detail before analyzing the three primaries together.
The Pacto Histórico’s primary
Gustavo Petro’s victory was a certainty. He won 80.5% of the vote, over 4.4 million votes, coming close to matching his first round vote in 2018 (4.85 million). He succeeded, however, in his main objective for these primaries, which had been to maximize total turnout as a show of strength before the first round in May. As I said, 47.5% of those who voted in a primary voted in the Pacto’s primary. That alone makes him the big winner of March 13, and marks an historic achievement for the Colombian left, historically one of the weakest in Latin America.
Petro, on March 13, cried victory and now wants to win the presidency in the first round, dispensing with the need for a second round in June — something that only Álvaro Uribe has managed to do (twice, in 2002 and 2006) since the 1991 Constitution created the two-round system for presidential elections. But while March 13’s results are a clear victory for the Pacto, it isn’t enough to win in the first round. In May 2018, 19.63 million people voted in the first round (which is more than the 18 million people which voted on March 13), so about 9–9.8 million votes are required to win 50%+ in the first round (if turnout stays the same). Petro has, at most, 5.8 million votes, if all those who voted in his primary will vote for him in May.
Going forward, Petro knows that he needs to further expand his electoral base towards the centre (hence his endless courtship of the Liberal Party), with the lowest hanging fruit being to win over more of the Greens’ bases. He also needs to, as much as possible, overcome the fears and anxieties created by his anti-establishment rhetoric and proposals for radical changes. Petro remains a polarizing figure: in nearly all polls, he has both the highest favourable and unfavourable ratings, and while the latter has dropped a bit, it remains quite high (40–45%). As the campaign heats up, it won’t be a cakewalk, although not impossible. It is still very much possible that, for the first time ever, Colombia, often seen as one of the most right-wing countries in South America, will elect a left-wing president.
Francia Márquez finished second behind Petro with 14.1% and over 780,000 votes, an extremely strong result — she won more votes than Fajardo, or any other candidate besides Petro and Fico! Francia Márquez’s excellent result made her the phenomenon of the primaries. It is an historic achievement for an Afro-Colombian community leader and environmentalist who has never held political office and whose campaign focused on issues too often ignored by politicians: structural racism, women’s rights, ethnic minorities, impoverished and ‘forgotten’ territories and local communities’ rights on environmental issues and resource extraction projects.
Somewhat surprisingly, Petro did end up choosing Francia Márquez as his running-mate. This was a surprising choice because it goes against his efforts to move to the centre and it abruptly ended, for now at least, the talks with the Liberal Party and César Gaviria. On the other hand, Francia Márquez helps secure her 780,000 votes for Petro and she strengthens his feminist credentials, after the past controversies with Álex Flórez and Hollman Morris. She was perhaps not his first choice, but ended up being the best choice given that he hasn’t yet been able to consolidate alliances outside of the Pacto, most notably with the Liberals because César Gaviria is playing hard to get and taking his sweet time.
Márquez won’t soften Petro’s image or move him to the centre — she’s less ‘pragmatic’ than he is when it comes to forging alliances (she had criticized an alliance with César Gaviria) and is more willing to take clear stances on controversial issues (abortion, environmental rights) than Petro.
After Francia Márquez went after César Gaviria in the event introducing her as the VP candidate — she said he represented neoliberalism and ‘more of the same’, César Gaviria angrily and abruptly responded by cutting off any further talks with the Pacto. He really didn’t like her remarks because he fired off a statement calling Márquez’s “rude, false and malicious” remarks an “unacceptable offence” and closing the door to any further talks with the Pacto and criticizing its “incendiary language”.
However, Petro hasn’t given up on attracting Liberal support, and can in fact count on the support of several Liberal congressmen. In addition, on March 31, Pacto senator Roy Barreras, who is perhaps the most eager to form an alliance with the Liberals as he dreams of a ‘progressive-liberal’ governing coalition in Congress, met with Gaviria and proclaimed that he had “reestablished communications” with Gaviria and that the Liberal leader’s ‘red lines’ were totally compatible with Petro’s platform.
The other candidates — Camilo Romero, Arelis Uriana and Alfredo Saade — did very poorly, barely standing out. Romero, despite his political experience (senator, governor, presidential pre-candidate in 2014), only won 4% (227.2k votes). Arelis Uriana and Alfredo Saade, who had the lowest name recognition of all the candidates, won less than 1% of the vote.
The lowest result for Petro was among expats (69.6%) and his best was his birthplace of Córdoba (94.5%). He was held below 75% in Antioquia (70.2%), Chocó (73%), Caldas (71.2%), Santander (72.8%) and Norte de Santander (71.9%). In general, Petro’s best results came from the Caribbean departments, reflecting his roots in the region. He won over 90% of the vote in Córdoba, Sucre, Atlántico, Magdalena and Cesar.
Francia Márquez’s success was thanks to good results in well-educated, prosperous large cities as well as with Afro-Colombians. She did well in cities such as Bogotá (19.8%), Medellín (27.7%), Bucaramanga (25.6%), Cúcuta (21.4%), Manizales (22.8%), Pereira (19.2%), Envigado (32.6%), Bello (23.7%) and Itagüí (26%), although her numbers were weaker in Cali (13.4%) and Popayán (8.1%). She won 23% in Chocó, the only black-majority department in Colombia, winning 28% in Quibdó (the capital of Chocó), and got 28.2% in Buenaventura and 28.9% in Tumaco, the two major black-majority Pacific port cities. Her result in her native Cauca was poor (11.4%) but she won 67.8% in Suárez, where she is from.
Arelis Uriana, the first Wayuu presidential candidate, won 11% and second place in her native Guajira (and 34.5% in Fonseca where her Wayuu community is located). Camilo Romero only managed 7.5% and third in Nariño where he was governor (and 4.3% in Bogotá where he’s spent the other part of his political life).
The Equipo por Colombia’s primary
Federico ‘Fico’ Gutiérrez, the former mayor of Medellín (2016–2019), won a decisive victory in the right’s primary. He beat his rivals by a bigger margin than expected, taking 54.2% of the vote and 2.16 million votes, and a majority of more than 1.45 million votes (36%) over his closest rival, Alex Char.
This is a very good result for Fico, making him the unrivaled candidate of the right and Gustavo Petro’s main rival. The hapless uribista presidential candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga, already abandoned by most of his party (including Duque) for all intents and purposes before the primary, got tired of being shafted by his own party and dropped out (apparently without consulting anyone beforehand) on Monday, endorsing Fico. He made the decision without waiting for an uribista caucus meeting, called by the líder máximo Álvaro Uribe, on Tuesday. Zuluaga wanted to avoid the humiliation of another ritual sacrifice by Uribe (he had already been sacrificed in 2017 when Uribe killed his presidential pre-candidacy because of the Odebrecht scandal).
Now, as I reported in my previous posts, a lot of uribismo had already more or less gone over to Fico and voted for him in big numbers on March 13, but Zuluaga surrendering and handing over uribismo to Fico without any kind of negotiation or agreement, without anything in exchange, didn’t go over too well with his party, although some welcomed his decision. Indeed, by impulsively dropping out, Zuluaga weakened uribismo even more: now Fico has uribismo behind him without even needing to ask for it, and Fico doesn’t owe them anything (not even his vice presidency).
While Zuluaga has endorsed Fico, his party, the Centro Democrático (CD), hasn’t formally done so yet. Uribe announced that his party will choose who to support in a poll, a pointless exercise given that it’s obvious who the vast majority of the CD prefers. But Uribe is a smart politician and knows that the formal endorsement of the unpopular CD could be the kiss of death for Fico, and he might be doing Fico a favour by withholding the CD’s formal endorsement.
Fico’s clear victory also killed off the recent speculation about a third presidential candidacy by former Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras. There could have been an opening for Vargas Lleras if somebody other than Fico had won, or if the primary had been a flop, to step in as a last-minute (desperate) ‘saviour’ for the right to ‘stop Petro’ — but with Fico’s decisive victory, there was no path. On Wednesday March 16, Vargas Lleras told his party that he wouldn’t run.
So far, everything has gone according to plan for Fico, following a similar playbook to the one that won him Medellín, surprisingly, in 2015 (in a narrow victory over the CD). He campaigned until now as an independent without political structures or parties behind him (at least formally), to appear as a regular citizen who doesn’t owe anything to anyone, with a grassroots campaign. He’s now been able to win the primary without engaging in backroom deals or negotiations with parties, and he can now welcome parties’ endorsements without the obligation to give them anything in exchange. He positioned himself on the right as the anti-Petro candidate, making him the right’s strongest candidate to take on the left’s favourite.
Now comes the most difficult part: winning the presidency. That was a real longshot until March 13, but now it appears a bit more likely. Fico’s big victory and his 2.1 million votes puts him in a very strong position to become Petro’s main rival and to turn the presidential election into a straight left-right contest, squeezing out Sergio Fajardo and Rodolfo Hernández. Fico’s strategy will continue to appear as the anti-Petro candidate, to appear in voters’ minds as the only candidate who can defeat Petro in the runoff. To start off, he needs to increase his name recognition: he’s far less familiar to voters than Petro is. His charisma and strength at communications/self-promotion will come in handy here.
He will continue to capitalize on the right’s fears about Petro’s economic agenda, by being the defender of the free market economy and private enterprise, but he will also try to move to the centre to send a strong message of ‘national unity’. He’s repeated several times there’s no left or right but only “common sense” and that he welcomes everyone except the corrupt and violent, and his first priority as newly crowned candidate of the right was to seek out meetings with a broad range of sectors — all former presidents except Ernesto Samper, other politicians, different social groups like trade unions, military reservists, pensioners, teachers, evangelical Christians, LGBT+ and others. Fico is well aware of Colombia’s traditional centrist and anti-populist (or, as cynics would say, oligarchic) tropism (at least until 2002) and wants to appear as the catch-all, unifying candidate who can defeat Petro to “defend democracy” against “populisms” and the left’s “radical” agenda.
His running-mate is in keeping with his ‘national unity’ strategy and was an unexpected choice: Rodrigo Lara Sánchez, former Green mayor of Neiva in Huila (2016–2019). Lara is a doctor who is the illegitimate son of former justice minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla (a colleague of Luis Carlos Galán who was assassinated by the Medellín Cartel in 1984), and the half-brother of retiring (ex-CR) senator Rodrigo Lara Restrepo. Lara Sánchez was a member of the Greens and close to Sergio Fajardo, unsuccessfully running for the Senate in 2010 with Fajardo’s Compromiso Ciudadano movement (Lara Restrepo also ran for Senate in 2010, with CR, and fell just 30 votes short of getting CR’s last seat, and he blamed his half-brother for having allowed himself to be used as a homonymous candidate to ‘steal his seat). Lara Sánchez supported Mockus’ 2010 campaign and he was elected mayor of Neiva in 2015 as the candidate of the Greens. As mayor, he became friends with Fico (mayor of Medellín at the same time), and did a pretty good job, getting national acclaim for significantly improving the transparency of public procurement in the city.
Lara reinforces Fico’s ‘national unity’ strategy which argues that there are good and worthy people on all sides and that what matters is “common sense”, not left and right. It is also a clear attempt to further squeeze Fajardo out by picking an ex-fajardista. While Petro’s vice presidential pick did not really allow him to expand his base towards the centre, Fico’s pick does in theory allow him to convincingly move to the centre. However, Lara Sánchez is not well known outside of Neiva so he doesn’t actually bring all that much to Fico, and he is a more ‘boring’ pick as a ‘white male’: in a year when a lot of candidates (who are all white males except for Betancourt) are symbolically choosing women and/or Afro-Colombians as their running-mates: Fico will be, with Betancourt and Gómez, the only candidate whose running mate is *not* a woman or black.
Fico’s main obstacle is the perception that he is “Duque 2.0”, when President Iván Duque has approval ratings of 20–30%. That nickname has already been used against him by his opponents (Petro and Rodolfo Hernández) but also by anti-Duque far-right uribistas who aren’t too hot about Fico like María Fernanda Cabal. Fico will need to appear different from Duque when his platform largely offers continuity with the current administration’s policies.
Fico won the primary by such a big margin because of the implicit support of many uribistas (including, most likely, Duque) and because he was seen (correctly) as the right’s strongest and most viable candidate. He also made the correct strategic decision to rely on the voto de opinión and an image as an independent candidate (without a party machine behind him) — his main rivals all, to some extent, chose the opposite strategy, that is to rely on machine support.
It’s already well known that presidential elections are overwhelmingly decided by the ‘independent’ and ‘free’ voto de opinión rather than the ‘tied-down’ or ‘bought’ votes from traditional political machines (maquinarias) — but it was not clear whether presidential primaries on the same day as congressional elections (still influenced to a large extent by the machine vote) would follow the same dynamics.
Now it’s clear. Presidential primaries, even if they’re held on the same day as congressional elections, aren’t driven by the same dynamics. In other words, machines don’t work very well in presidential primaries. While people’s votes in congressional elections may still be determined to some extent by machines, their vote in a presidential contest is a much more personal, freer decision.
Alex Char, David Barguil and Enrique Peñalosa learned that lesson on March 13. Alex Char, as I explained in my profile of the candidates, is the public leader of one of the most powerful political and business clans in Colombia, with quasi-hegemonic power in Barranquilla (Atlántico) and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Char led an atypical campaign (barely showed up to debates, started publicly campaigning very late) but relied on the powerful charista machines to collect his 2 million+ signatures last year and to organize campaign events this year during his relatively short campaign, even though he eschewed openly embracing (controversial) politicians from his machines. It didn’t work out. Alex Char finished a distant second with just 17.7% and about 700,000 votes. Furthermore, Char was very much a regional candidate — half of all his votes nationally came from Atlántico, and 83% of all his votes came from the departments he won (all in the Caribbean region and San Andrés). He won 88.3% in Atlántico and 75.2% in neighbouring Magdalena, where charista machines are very strong too, as well as 58% in La Guajira, 50.6% in Cesar, 46.1% in Bolívar and 42.9% in San Andrés. Elsewhere in Colombia, Char was a non-factor, often finishing dead last (Bogotá 4.1%, Valle 3%, Santander 7.3%, Antioquia 0.8%, Caldas 1.4%, Cundinamarca 4.3%, Tolima 2.8% etc.).
David Barguil managed the rather daunting task of finally unifying the whole Conservative Party behind a single presidential candidate from its own ranks (something which hadn’t really happened since 1998, arguably), so he bet everything on the Conservatives’ machines to win the primary. After all, the Conservatives won nearly 2 million votes in the 2014 and 2018 congressional elections, and even more this year. But his defeat, with just 15.8% and 630,000 votes, showed the limitations of machines in presidential primaries. While the Conservatives did very well in the congressional election at the same time — they won 2.2 million votes — only 28% of that vote went to the party’s presidential candidate. All this in spite of Barguil openly embracing and campaigning alongside his party’s congressional candidates, even ones from controversial clans with corrupt pasts. It’s likely that the machines remained much more focused on their own elections (Congress) while only halfheartedly moving for Barguil.
Barguil had a favourite son vote in Córdoba (he won 82.1% there) which accounted for 28% of all his votes, and he also won with 47% in Sucre (neighbouring department, and where he was backed by the dominant Liberal faction which controls the governorship). Again, his strategy of relying heavily on Conservative machines didn’t work out: In Nariño, a left-leaning department where the Conservative Party has been strong for a long time, the party won nearly 120,000 votes for Senate but Barguil only got 11,000 votes there. In Tolima, the party’s best result for Senate with 38.8% of the vote (179,800 votes), Barguil won less than 35,000 votes. However, it did allow him to be more of a national candidate with decent numbers in many places (Santander 23.6%, Boyacá 24.2%, Bogotá 12%, Cundinamarca 19.3%, Tolima 29.8%, Nariño 24.5%, Huila 17.2%).
Enrique Peñalosa did extremely poorly, proving for the umpteenth time that he’s a bad candidate and the dictionary definition of paper tiger. He finished last with just 231,500 votes or 5.8% — he finished behind Aydeé Lizarazo, a much less experienced and very little known candidate backed by a small party with a disciplined vote. Peñalosa suffered from his general unpopularity, his lack of any strong base of his own, a lack of charisma and his legendary inability to properly connect or communicate with the general electorate. Having failed to get enough signatures to get on the ballot on his own, he needed the endorsement of the Partido de la U, and he ended up becoming quite reliant on that party’s leader, Dilian Francisca Toro (whom he named as his putative ‘running mate’, in a very ‘Ted Cruz with Carly Fiorina’ type of thing), and her machines in the Valle del Cauca. Again, that strategy failed as well.
Peñalosa only managed a paltry second in Bogotá (where he had been mayor for two terms) with just 19% against 55.8% for Fico. In Dilian Francisca Toro’s Valle, he won just 14.4% (43,200 votes compared to the U’s 249,000 votes for Senate there) — although he did win Toro’s hometown of Guacarí!
The Centro Esperanza’s primary
Sergio Fajardo, the centre’s presidential candidate in 2018, won the Centro Esperanza’s primary, largely by default. He had the advantage of a past presidential candidacy, high name recognition and years of political experience and none of the other candidates in the primary were able to catch up to him. He won with a third of the vote, or 723,000 votes. It is very much a pyrrhic victory given the low turnout in the centrist primary. Indeed, Fajardo won fewer votes than Francia Márquez in the Pacto primary (she won over 780,000).
The Centro Esperanza’s primary was a flop, for some of the reasons I previously explained, and it seriously weakens the centre going into the actual presidential campaign. Fajardo came very close to qualifying for the second round in 2018 (and many will argue that he would have beaten Duque in a runoff), but so far his 2022 campaign is off to an inauspicious start. The primary has set up the narrative that the election will be between the left (Petro) and the right (Fico), which squeezes the centre out of the picture.
Fajardo’s most pressing challenge will be to make the centre visible, relevant and viable in the presidential campaign. He is, however, unlikely to significantly change his rhetoric or the key themes he has always focused on (corruption, against the extremes and certain issues like education), and his message will remain that he is the only ‘hope’ for a reasonable, moderate and cautious version of change.
Given that Petro is all but certain to have a spot in the runoff, Fajardo will probably focus on beating Fico in the first round to face off against Petro in the runoff. He will do so by branding Fico as the candidate of uribismo and continuity, as the candidate who will continue the policies of the unpopular Duque administration and who is supported by Álvaro Uribe, who is more unpopular than ever before.
While Petro and Fico will both try to expand their bases by appealing to the centre, Fajardo needs to defend ‘his’ centre and grow in other directions. He will target those who voted for Francia Márquez in the Pacto’s primary, who might not want to vote for Petro. He will also look at the third or so of the electorate which did vote on March 13 but didn’t vote in any primary, as well as those who didn’t vote on March 13 but may vote in the presidential election — considering that turnout patterns are quite different in the presidential election.
Fajardo’s political principles and vision makes it difficult for him to form strong alliances with other groups — in fact, he’s very reticent about forming any kind of alliances or coalitions, particularly with traditional sectors. He nevertheless made limited overtures to other groups, but quickly clarified that he would set the criteria for allying with other groups, and that these criteria would be clear and rigorous. It is very unlikely, nearly impossible, that he will ever ally with the Liberal Party: he doesn’t like their way of doing politics, and Liberal leader César Gaviria hates him.
Fajardo chose Luis Gilberto Murillo, the former environment minister under Juan Manuel Santos, as his running-mate. Murillo had been running as the presidential candidate of Colombia Renaciente since January but never polled above 1%. Murillo is not a particularly strong pick: he doesn’t bring very much, besides some much-needed diversity to a coalition which was criticized for being made up exclusively of rich white males. Fajardo chose him for his recognized expertise on environmental issues and to give a ‘voice to the regions’, although it’s unclear how much support Murillo brings from his native Chocó.
Fajardo, again, largely won the primary by default. His campaign, like that of the coalition, was uninspiring, slow and fairly insipid. He failed to excite many voters and his primary results clearly show that he did not significantly expand the centre’s base in any way (when you consider that Fajardo won 4.5 million votes in May 2018…).
Juan Manuel Galán finished second, about 9 points behind Fajardo, with 22.6% and 486,800 votes. It was a poor result for him, made worse by his party failing to pass the threshold for the Senate. He had hopes that he had caught up with Fajardo, and that his last name combined with his own popularity/likeability would translate into votes.
Arguably, the only one who came out of the primary with a good result was Carlos Amaya, the former governor of Boyacá (2016–2019) who did surprisingly well, finishing a strong third with 20.9% and over 450,000 votes. However, a lot of that was due to his strong favourite son vote and machine support in Boyacá, which had, by far, the highest turnout of any department — as we’ll see later, it’s the only place where the centrist primary had the most votes of the three primaries (nearly 60% of boyacense primary voters participated in the centrist primary). He won 85% in Boyacá, and 43% of all his votes came from Boyacá. He also won in Casanare which ‘neighbours’ Boyacá (though they’re separated by the Cordillera Oriental). He also got a decent result in Bogotá (17.6% or 116.9k votes), probably a result both of ‘opinion’ and his faction’s ‘quotas’ in the district administration, and in Cundinamarca (22.5%) with many victories in municipalities bordering Boyacá (they form a kind of common geographic and cultural region).
Alejandro Gaviria was another of the losers on March 13. He finished fourth, behind Amaya, with just 336,000 votes (15.6%). There had been high expectations in the summer of 2021 for his candidacy, but in the end he too failed to excite many voters. He came into the coalition, after lengthy discussions and internal wrangling, with a different political vision and principles. Fajardo’s core principle is that “the means justify the ends” (or no todo vale, “not everything goes”), reflecting his unwillingness to engage in ‘politicking’ or alliances of convenience with political groups with corrupt or clientelistic practices. However, Gaviria shook up this old vision (the core of the centrist vision since 2010) by defending an ideologically liberal, reformist agenda — and being willing to accept the support of traditional politicians, including some with clientelistic practices, in order to win and to eventually transform his liberal vision into reality. In the end, he only got the worst of both worlds: his ideological vision failed to convince many voters, and his alliances with some traditional machines created discord in the coalition but failed to yield many votes.
Jorge Enrique Robledo finished dead last, with just 161,000 votes (7.5%). It was a nasty and stinging defeat for the veteran left-wing opposition politician. He won even fewer votes than he did as a senatorial candidate in 2018 (competing against hundreds of candidates), when he got 226,000 preferential votes. All of his party’s senatorial candidates, on the Greens-Centro Esperanza list, lost and his party only won a single seat in the House, in Bogotá.
Galán won Nariño (he also did well in Cauca with 33%) and Gaviria won La Guajira: I have no good idea why, the vagaries of low turnout? Galán also did very well in Santander (30%, less than 2% behind Fajardo), where his father was from. Cundinamarca was a 4-way mess: Fajardo 27.6%, Galán 25.4%, Amaya 22.5%, Gaviria 19.3%: as mentioned, Amaya did well in municipalities close to Boyacá (as well as Madrid and Mosquera in the eastern suburbs of Bogotá), Galán won in Soacha (lower-income massive extension/suburb of Bogotá where his father was murdered in 1989), Girardot and Facatativá while Gaviria had machine support from former governor Jorge Rey which won him Funza (Rey’s stronghold).
Primary turnout and the inter-primary turnout race
As the map above shows, the Pacto Histórico won the ‘turnout race’ nearly everywhere, except in seven departments and among expatriate voters abroad. The right won the turnout race in the native departments of its top three candidates — conservative Antioquia (Fico Gutiérrez), Córdoba (David Barguil) and Atlántico (Alex Char) — as well as Caldas, Quindío and Norte de Santander, traditionally right-leaning departments. The centrist primary emerged victorious only in Boyacá, where there was high turnout for their favourite son, Carlos Amaya.
Overall this is very good for the Pacto: they won the turnout game in more right-leaning regions like Casanare, Tolima, Huila, Santander and put up a good fight in the Eje Cafetero (Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío). The Caribbean coast was their only weak point, but as Atlántico and Córdoba show, this has a lot to do with overwhelming favourite son and machine dynamics for Char and Barguil respectively. The Pacto utterly dominated in Chocó, Cauca, Putumayo and Nariño: over 75% of primary votes there were in the Pacto’s primary. The right’s best result was Antioquia, where close to 60% of votes were in the right-wing primary.
The centre only won in Boyacá, where 59.3% of primary voters participated in the Centro Esperanza primary, and did so overwhelmingly for favourite son Carlos Amaya (who also has machines and public apparatus support there). The centre was in ‘second place’ in terms of primary turnout in Bogotá (27.9% of votes vs. 49.2% for the Pacto and 23% for the right) and Cundinamarca (31% of votes vs. 46.1% for the Pacto and 23% for the right).
As expected, the Caribbean remained a dead zone for the centre: in all Caribbean departments except for insular San Andrés, the centrist primary lagged way behind with less than 10% of the total primary turnout (the lowest was Córdoba, where only 4% of primary voters voted in the centrist primary), it also had less than 10% of the total primary turnout in Chocó, Cauca and Putumayo. Sergio Fajardo had already done very poorly in the Caribbean region in 2018 (it arguably cost him a spot in the runoff), and the centre has no political structure or grassroots support there — and politics there, more than anywhere else, requires political structures and/or grassroots support.
As mentioned, two-thirds of those who voted in the congressional elections also voted in the primaries. The map above shows the total number of votes in all three primaries as a percentage of the total number of votes for the House. There were significant variations in primary turnout, from just 22% in Guainía to 87% in Bogotá (and 95.7% abroad)!
Primary turnout was lowest in the most remote, peripheral and ‘forgotten’ regions of Colombia, the former national territories (until 1991) of Amazonas, Guainía, Guaviare, San Andrés, Vaupés and Vichada. In these five departments, which tend to be less interested by presidential elections, perhaps because few candidates bother to campaign there, less than 40% of those who voted for Congress voted in a primary.
On the other hand, 87% of those who voted for Congress in Bogotá also voted in a primary. Bogotá is the political centre of Colombia and tends to be more interested and motivated by the presidential election than any other election. In Atlántico, Antioquia, Valle, Putumayo, Cauca and Boyacá over 70% of those who voted for Congress also voted in a primary. Atlántico, Antioquia and Valle are home to three of the other major cities in Colombia (Barranquilla, Medellín and Cali) while Atlántico, Antioquia, Boyacá and Cauca all had a local favourite son or daughter competing in the primaries.
It is interesting that in Santander, the stronghold of presidential candidate Rodolfo Hernández (who did not participate in the primaries), only 51% of those who voted for Congress participated in a primary. In Caldas, the native department of (now former) uribista presidential candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga (who told his supporters not to vote in the primaries, but few of them listened), again only 51% of congressional voters participated in a primary (much lower than in neighbouring Antioquia, Risaralda or Quindío).
About 2.6 million more people voted in a primary in 2022 than in 2018. In 2022, unlike in 2018, there was a centrist primary. In 2022, unlike in 2018, uribismo didn’t (formally) participate in any primary. The map above compares the total number of votes in all primaries in 2018 and 2022, expressed as percentage change. The total number of votes cast in primaries increased in all but seven departments. The biggest increase in votes was in tiny Vaupés (+116%) followed by expatriates (+91.4%) and San Andrés (+72.6%). It is important to point out that turnout overall (in congressional elections) increased in Vaupés and abroad. Atlántico (+64%) and Valle (+61%) were the two largest departments where primary turnout increased the most since 2018. In Atlántico, this is likely due to Alex Char’s favourite son status and his machines boosting turnout (Char or charismo did not participate or formally support anyone in the primaries in 2018).
It is interesting to point out where, going against the trend, there were actually fewer votes in the 2022 primaries than in the 2018 primaries: Norte de Santander (-29%), Casanare (-21.7%), Arauca (-20%), Santander (-17.1%), Vichada (-10.4%), Huila (-6.3%) and Meta (-0.1%). This is in part due to lower overall turnout: turnout in the congressional elections dropped by more than the national average in all these departments, most notably in Arauca. But, interestingly, all seven of these departments are (or were, in 2018) strongly uribista, particularly Casanare, the most uribista department in Colombia. This likely means that while a lot of uribistas did vote in the right-wing primary (like Iván Duque did himself), some uribistas did not. Santander is also, of course, the stronghold of Rodolfo Hernández, who told his supporters not to vote in the primaries.
These two maps above compare, in raw votes, the change in turnout in the left and right-wing primaries between 2018 and 2022.
In all but one department the Pacto’s 2022 primary won more votes than the left’s primary had in 2018. The lone exception was Magdalena, where their votes dropped by 13%: in 2018, local favourite son (now governor) Carlos Caicedo, Petro’s only primary rival, won the department, so without him competing this year, turnout dipped slightly (Petro himself still won a lot more votes there than in 2018: from 66.5k to 123k). In general terms, the left-wing vote totals did not increase by all that much in the Caribbean (except for San Andrés), because the left was already strong there in 2018 and it needed to contend with two local candidates in the right’s primary dragging a lot of votes. It also didn’t gain much in Boyacá, where the left wasn’t strong in 2018 but where Amaya had a huge favourite son pull.
The good news for the Pacto are the significant gains in Paisa country (Antioquia + Eje Cafetero): a 140% increase in Antioquia (from 168.9k to 405.7k), a 151% increase in Risaralda, a 156% increase in Caldas and a 109% increase in Quindío. Petro was looking exactly for that, and he got it: it doesn’t change that the Paisa country is still fundamentally conservative, but Petro couldn’t afford to be as weak there this year as he was in 2018. Another good data point for the Pacto: a 142.6% increase in the Valle, going from 284.4k to 690k and therefore soundly beating the right in the turnout game in what is often a bellwether region (and epicentre of the 2021 protests). The biggest gains for the left came from the remote former national territories of Guainía, Vaupés, Guaviare and San Andrés as well as expats (overall expat turnout was a bit higher than in 2018): in the case of a tiny electorate like Guainía this means going from 760 votes to 2,700 votes.
For the right, on the other hand, the map isn’t particularly great: they failed to match the right’s very high 2018 turnout (6.1 million) in all but 4 departments and with expats.
The turnout increases all came from the Caribbean, and they were driven by favourite sons David Barguil (Córdoba: +43%) and Alex Char (Atlántico +78%, Magdalena +38%, San Andrés +0.1%). Turnout was not down all that much from 2018 in the other Caribbean departments: Sucre (-14%), La Guajira (-15.5%) and Bolívar (-16.9%).
Turnout in Antioquia was also very good and came close to 2018 levels (just -3.7%, from 997.9k to 960.8k), thanks to Fico’s huge favourite son vote.
The biggest dropoffs were in Boyacá (-77.5%), most likely because of Amaya, as well as Casanare (-72.9%) and Vichada (-72.8%), which, as we saw above, had lower total primary turnout than in 2018 and are both uribista strongholds. Santander also saw right-wing votes fall by 68.5%, likely a case of ex-uribistas/right-wingers who are now rodolfistas following Rodolfo’s orders not to vote in the primaries.
Congressional elections
Members of both houses of Congress were elected — a total of 102 senators and 181 representatives. This included the 100 senators in the national constituency, the 162 representatives in 33 territorial constituencies and the international (expats) constituency, the special ethnic minority constituencies in both houses (1 indigenous in the Senate, 2 Afro-Colombian and 1 indigenous in the House) and, for the first time, the 16 transitional constituencies for peace (Citrep) representing victims of the armed conflict in different rural regions of the country.
There were several errors and/or irregularities in the unofficial preliminary results reported on March 13, and the ongoing final count (escrutinio) differs substantially from the results of the preliminary count (pre-count or preconteo), much more so than in previous elections. These problems have created an electoral crisis which has destroyed confidence and trust in the Colombian electoral system, on all sides of the political spectrum.
The electoral crisis
On the night of the election, the Registraduría unofficially reports a preliminary count (preconteo) of the results, based on information provided to it by poll workers at polling locations across the country. This is similar to the PREP system in Mexican elections, and it has no legal value — the preconteo is merely informative, and does not determine election results.
The final count (escrutinio) takes place in the days following the election and its results are considered official.
On election day, poll workers (jurados de votación or election juries) report the results of their table (mesa) by filling out long, rectangular forms known as the E-14. They need to fill out, by hand, three separate E-14 forms which should, in theory, be identical (as they report the same information): one copy is used for the preconteo, another copy is scanned and uploaded to the internet and the third copy is placed in a sealed bag with the actual ballots and sent to the vote count location. The escrutinio compares the three E-14 forms and recounts the votes if there are any inconsistencies, mark ups, corrections, modifications and deletions on any of the forms, or if there are any suspicions of inconsistencies. The escrutinio is overseen by citizens, scrutineers, judges and delegates from the Registraduría and Procuraduría.
This is a cumbersome process prone to human errors, manipulation and irregularities. There have already been controversies in the past because of obvious anomalies and modifications on uploaded E-14 forms, which have led to suspicions of fraud. In 2018, after pictures of marked up E-14 forms went viral on social media, Gustavo Petro questioned the integrity of the results and his supporters claimed that the election was rigged in Iván Duque’s favour. The MOE, an independent NGOs which monitors election, revised the allegations and found anomalies on about 3% of the forms it revised, which could have represented irregularities in about 70,000 votes in an election with 19 million votes. The MOE at the time already raised several concerns about the process and notably recommended the use of identical E-14 forms (carbon copies, digitalization etc.).
Fast forward to 2022, and not only were the MOE’s recommendations to streamline the E-14 process ignored, but the design of the E-14 forms for the Senate election had a fatal design flaw, likely the source of all the irregularities in this election. Counting the votes for the Senate election is a titanic effort: 16 lists, half of them with open lists allowing preferential votes to any one of up to 100 candidates on the list, adding all those votes up, writting it all down three separate times, in addition to counting votes for other things (primaries, House).
Gustavo Petro’s Pacto Histórico ran a closed list, where voters only vote for the party list. The Pacto appeared at the very bottom of page 9 (of 11) of the E-14, below the 100 boxes for the open list of the Partido de la U, almost as a tiny footnote which is very easy to miss, as Petro showed on Twitter:
As a result of this design flaw, votes for the Pacto were systematically underreported. After the election, the Pacto began claiming that 300,000–500,000 of its votes had not been properly reported. Indeed, as the MOE confirmed, there were 28,400 voting locations (mesas) where no votes for the Pacto were reported, which is very atypical given that the Conservative Party, with a similar vote share, got zero votes in only 3,700 mesas. Whether this was done with malicious and fraudulent intent by unscrupulous poll workers, out of incompetence and poor training or just a perfect storm of human errors is not clear and everybody will have different opinions. I’ll leave it up to you to decide, although never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
After the first few days, the Pacto’s leadership has avoided using the narrative of fraud, although its supporters online have been quick to consider this as a massive fraud. The Pacto’s accusations ‘infected’ other parties like Fuerza Ciudadana, Nuevo Liberalismo and the Greens, who all jumped on the irregularities train and claimed that their votes were also been systematically underreported. Thanks to an organized election monitoring organization with over 60,000 scrutineers spearheaded by veteran senator Roy Barreras, now a Petro ally, the Pacto set out to monitor the escrutinio, detect irregularities in the E-14 and ensure that their votes were properly counted and reported.
On March 18, the Registraduría reported partial results of the final count for the Senate (with 96.7% of tables counted). As a result of the escrutinio, the Pacto gained 390,000 votes compared to Sunday’s pre-count, giving it three more seats in the Senate. Most of these ‘new’ votes had likely not been previously reported, rather than mistakenly awarded to other parties: the total number of valid votes increased by 209,000 compared to the pre-count.
This is a much, much bigger variation from the pre-count than in previous elections. While as a result of the 2018 final count Colombia Justa Libres (CJL) passed the 3% threshold with 33,000 more votes than initially reported, the total number of votes between the pre-count and final count varied by only 23,000, a variation of 0.1%. This year, the variation between both counts will be huge.
Paradoxically, the escrutinio has shown that the safeguards in the system do work, and that the most egregious irregularities in the pre-count were corrected.
However, it is clear that the pre-count fiasco has further added to existing deep mistrust in the electoral system, completely destroying trust and confidence in the electoral institutions, on all sides. The left will argue that there was an organized operation to steal their votes until they defended them. The right, which had up till now mostly showed confidence in the electoral bodies, will claim that the left gained half a million votes ‘out of thin air’ and raise their own suspicions about fraud.
After it was announced that the Pacto gained 390,000 votes so far in the escrutinio, the right has adopted wholesale the narrative of fraud. Álvaro Uribe has said that “this result cannot be accepted” and his party called for a full recount of all votes. On Twitter, he has shared anecdotal claims of fraud or of people’s votes not appearing on E-14s where they voted. Other uribistas have claimed that it is impossible that it is impossible that 390,000 votes can ‘appear’ out of nowhere.
It’s a bit disingenuous for the right to suddenly scream fraud. Before the elections, they largely ignored legitimate criticisms against the electoral bodies and Duque went out of his way to say that there were proper electoral guarantees and that Colombia’s electoral system was the best.
Some right-wingers have even veered off into conspiracy theories. Former president Andrés Pastrana, now the leading source of right-wing conspiracy theories, has said that there was fraud in favour of the Pacto and has been the main voice of a conspiracy theory which claims that Petro has ties with Indra, the Spanish company which sold the elections software to the Registraduría. Before the elections, Pastrana falsely claimed that Petro privately met with Indra during his visit to Spain in February. Now, Pastrana has called Indra a company “dominated” by the governing Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos.
With Uribe now saying that the election results can’t be accepted, Petro now finds himself calling on all parties to “defend democracy” against Uribe’s “invitation to a coup”. It is a rather incongruous turn of events: the right which has always taken pride in claiming that Colombia is the oldest democracy in South America now have factions refusing to recognize the results of the election, while the left, which until a few days ago was claiming that there is not a real democracy in Colombia, are calling to defend democracy.
In the face of general repudiation of his incompetent management of the elections, National Registrar Alexander Vega took the unprecedented decision of requesting a full national recount of all votes for the Senate on March 21. A few hours before, Duque had called for a full recount as well.
There were mixed reactions to the news. Uribismo celebrated but Petro opposed the recount, claiming that the chain of custody of the votes was broken and that there was therefore no transparency or guarantees. He claimed that the votes are now in the hands of the “uribista majority of the National Electoral Council (CNE)”.
Many experts were quick to express doubts about the legality of a full recount. The constitution allows the CNE to review the escrutinios and electoral materials at any step of the electoral process to guarantee the veracity of the results. However, there is no legal possibility for there to be a full national recount — there may be recounts only for specific reasons, like any voting location where the E-14 forms were tampered with. Even if it was legal, it would be a logistical nightmare which could take up to 2 years. Experts also considered that Petro’s claim that the chain of custody being broken was unsubstantiated and likely false, given that the ballots and all other electoral materials are in the hands of judges, and will remain locked up with them until 2026 — they are not in the hands of the ‘uribista CNE’.
President Iván Duque convened the national commission on electoral guarantees for March 22. Vega was extremely defensive while nearly all party representatives criticized him and the Registraduría. 17 of the 21 parties at the meeting were against a full recount with only the CD, MSN and Green Oxygen in favour of a recount and the Conservatives undecided. Most of them also emphatically stated that there was no fraud, and the interior minister concluded the meeting by emphasizing that he heard no party talk of fraud. In the face of the majority opinion against the recount, Vega changed his mind and announced that he wouldn’t request it. Most parties agreed that the correct solution is to allow everyone to present challenges to the escrutinio at whichever level and ensure that all complaints are resolved fairly.
Only uribismo remains defiant and dead set in their claims, and has requested a full recount from the CNE, as is their right. It is unlikely that the CNE will accept this request given the majority opinion of the parties and experts. They will find themselves increasingly lonely in their position: even Duque, who initially called for a recount, changed his mind and expressed his trust in the ongoing count.
Target: Alexander Vega
The one thing that everybody can agree on is that the Registraduría National Registrar Alexander Vega has done a terrible job and lost the confidence of the parties and the electorate, and that Vega should resign. Suspicions and mistrust in Vega is nothing new, but it has now spread to nearly every party.
Alexander Vega, a lawyer specialized in electoral law and former magistrate of the National Electoral Council (CNE), was elected registrar in 2019 by the presidents of the three highest courts. Vega’s strength, up till now, was that he was friends with politicians in all traditional parties. Prior to his election, Vega worked to make friends in high places and served as a litigator helping candidates challenge election results. According to Andrés Guerra Hoyos, now an uribista senator-elect, in 2010 Vega asked him, on behalf of a CNE magistrate, for 1.2 billion pesos in exchange for revising some vote counts that had caused Guerra to narrowly lose a Senate seat. Vega has denied this story and the case was never investigated.
In 2014, Vega, not even 40, was elected to the CNE, representing the Partido de la U. The CNE has important roles like certifying election results, hearing complaints against election results and procedures, overseeing electoral campaigns and regulating campaign finance. The CNE’s nine magistrates are elected every four years, at the start of the new Congress, proportionally allocated between candidates proposed by parties or coalitions with congressional representation. Therefore, the CNE is a politicized body made up of magistrates representing the parties they’re supposed to oversee, and it’s no surprise that it’s widely regarded as a weak and ineffective body which rarely adopts tough sanctions against politicians and parties.
Vega made it to the CNE despite his relative inexperience and the reticence of some members of the Partido de la U thanks to his connections and friends in the party caucus. He was elected president of the CNE in 2016, after the body went nine months without a president because of internal divisions. In the CNE, Vega avoided hurting the interests of his politician friends and continued courting them, organizing big parties. He weathered more accusations, like his alleged ties with former senator and convicted Odebrecht lobbyist Otto Bula (who admitted to taking bribes from the corrupt Brazilian multinational).
Vega’s ambition was to be elected national registrar. The registrar is elected by the presidents of the three highest courts, now following a merit-based process weighing professional experience, knowledge and an interview. Controversially, they changed the rules to give more weight to the knowledge test and interview, benefiting Vega, who placed second to last of all candidates on the CV evaluation. Vega was elected thanks to his good results on the knowledge test and the interview, and came into office with his strong connections with politicians from all traditional parties.
He intended to modernize the organization and its services, using new technologies — hence the slogan “the Registraduría of the 21st century”. He announced a new digital national ID card and the implementation of electronic voting in 2022 (electronic voting has been allowed by the constitution since 2003 and should have been in place since 2014, but it has always been delayed). His attempt to introduce an electronic voting pilot program has been stopped (and the issue remains very controversial).
Thanks to his connections, Vega managed to have a new electoral code adopted by Congress without too much debate (Colombia’s outdated electoral code dates back to the 1980s). It has not yet been officially adopted as it is pending mandatory judicial review by the Constitutional Court.
Before the elections, Vega had faced several controversies and he was already largely distrusted by the left-wing opposition (who he hasn’t made friends with). In 2021, he awarded a huge contract for biometric identification, including facial recognition, to a consortium including Thomas Greg & Sons, a company which has won all contracts for election logistics since 2010. He also gave the Registraduría a complete monopoly on biometric data, something which has been denounced both by the private sector and NGOs.
He also fed mistrust in the electoral system with various missteps. In 2021, he questioned the statistical agency DANE’s population projections, claiming that the Colombian population was 55 million rather than 50 million as the DANE estimated. This raised serious doubts about the electoral roll, widely considered to be inflated, and the left warned about the risk of electoral fraud in 2022. A short while later, he created another firestorm by saying that those who didn’t feel like they had electoral guarantees shouldn’t run. Vega’s management of the first youth council elections in November 2021 was improvised and chaotic, notably with a last-minute change to allow people to vote in any precinct, not only where they were registered.
Organizing the elections is the biggest test for any registrar and while there are always criticisms, Vega clearly failed completely in his first big test. It began even before the election: in January, for example, the website for voter registration crashed and he falsely blamed it on the Russians. On election day, the Registraduría’s website to check where to vote crashed, and he blamed it on a cyberattack, when later the Fiscalía said that there had been no such thing.
In addition to not doing anything to prevent a repeat of the problems with the E-14s, the Registraduría was also criticized for changing poll workers — who had usually been teachers and public servants — for young, inexperienced people and giving them poor training. The right had been complaining that they couldn’t trust teachers because of their alleged left-wing bias through their teachers’ union (one of uribismo’s favourite punching bags). The MOE has said that the selection and appointment process for poll workers was not transparent. Others have also blamed the poll workers for the numerous mistakes being reported on the E-14 forms this year, and some poll workers could even face disciplinary charges from the Procuraduría if obvious irregularities are found (more votes than voters at a precinct for example).
Most recently, Vega’s volte-face on a full recount was another terrible misstep which was extremely poorly thought out and needlessly added fuel to the fire. Vega should have the intelligence not to impulsively present such improvised and legally dubious ideas in the first place.
Obviously Vega didn’t create mistrust in the electoral system and institutions by himself overnight. Politicians, on all sides, have their share of responsibility for incessantly raising the spectre of fraud and instilling mistrust in the institutions. But Vega’s incomptence added to an already explosive situation and broke whatever trust there still was in the processes and institutions. He has not only lost the confidence of the left but also the right and the centre. The old friends he’s made over the years have now turned against him and joined the chorus of those demanding his resignation.
Senate results
Given the above, any analysis and numbers in this post are bound to be modified by the final results.
The above table is based on the partial results of the final count reported on March 18 by the Registraduría. Final results remain unavailable. The seat count is a projection, no winners have been certified yet.
Turnout was around 47%, down from 49% in 2018. Overall, 18.4 million people voted, up just a bit from 2018 (17.8 million). There were about 16.5 million valid votes in the national constituency, which is up significantly from 2018 (14.47 million) as invalid votes, thanks to the new ballot design, fell to 4.1% (lowest since the 2003 electoral reform), and there were 3% of unmarked votes. The number of blank votes (which are valid votes in Colombia) was high: 1 million, or 6.4%, up from 4.7% in 2018.
The major winner is the Pacto, which will be the largest caucus in the Senate, the first time a left-wing party forms the single largest bloc in the Senate. Following the final count, they currently stand at 19 seats, and they have solid hopes of winning a 20th seat when all is counted — on March 30, the Pacto said that the latest results gave them 2.8 million votes and 20 seats. This is as large as the caucus of the uribista CD in the outgoing Senate. In addition, both indigenous seats will be held by parties which are part of the Pacto, the MAIS and AICO respectively, bringing them up to 21 senators, perhaps 22.
According to current numbers, the Pacto won nearly 2.7 million votes, or 3.1 million including Carlos Caicedo’s Fuerza Ciudadana (below the threshold), compared to 5.8 million votes in the Pacto’s primary and Petro’s 4.4 million votes there: this is about 49–56% of the primary turnout and 60–70% of Petro’s primary vote. Petro did not completely succeed in presidentializing the congressional elections, but did much better than most expected and certainly a whole lot better than in 2018.
The Pacto had aimed to win about 20 seats and will either achieve that ambitious goal or come very close to it. Many felt that they were aiming too high and being unrealistic, and pegged the Pacto at around 15 or so seat instead. The Pacto’s Senate caucus of 19–20 seats will see the return of familiar faces of the left: Piedad Córdoba and Clara López, and representation of the different sectors of the Pacto with the notable exception of Francia Márquez.
Some of the sectors represented within the left’s new Senate caucus include Petro’s own Colombia Humana (led by Gustavo Bolívar, the top candidate, and María José Pizarro), the Polo (Iván Cepeda, Alexander López, Wilson Arias, Robert Daza, Sandra Jaimes), the UP (Aída Avella), Camilo Romero (his sister-in-law, Esmeralda Hernández), Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero (controversial Álex Flórez, star of Colombian elbowgate), Roy Barreras (as well as the leader of the Afro-Colombian party ADA he’s used) and the MAIS (boyacense peasant leader César Pachón and the party’s president Martha Peralta), among others. Thanks to its gender-balanced closed list, nearly half (9) of the Pacto’s 19 senators are women, and Martha Peralta is the first Wayúu woman elected to the Senate.
The two indigenous senators representing the MAIS and Indigenous Authorities of Colombia (AICO), two parties which are part of the Pacto, can also be added to the Pacto’s total — effectively giving them 21–22 seats.
The Conservatives were the other main winner — not a lot of people expected them to do as well as they did. Their vote, 2 million in the past two elections, increased to 2.2 million, and gained about 1% in percentage share terms. They will have 15 seats, one more than in 2018. There are several reasons to explain their success. Firstly, some machines received a big push from powerful governorships— in Colombian congressional elections, there’s rarely anything better than having a family member as governor — like in Bolívar (Blel clan). The party’s most popular candidate, winning over 165,000 votes, is incumbent senator Nadia Blel Scaff, the sister of Bolívar governor Vicentico Blel and the daughter/heir of former senator Vicente Blel Saad, convicted for parapolítica. Tolima, the Conservatives’ best department with nearly 39%, is controlled by the Barreto clan, led by former two-term governor Óscar Barreto, who was elected to the Senate with over 112,000 votes. There were even enough votes to reelect his cousin, Miguel Ángel Barreto (who had taken his distances as both were competing for a seat). The Barreto clan controls the governorship through an ally (and Óscar’s nephew is secretary-general in the governor’s office) and has monopolized most public institutions in the department and the capital, Ibagué. Óscar Barreto faces charge for irregularities in contracts signed while he was governor between 2008 and 2011, in addition to various other allegations of corruption and clientelism. Miguel Ángel Barreto has been accused of vote buying and campaign finance violations.
Second, a lot of traditional machine politicians significantly grew their vote, boosting the party. Carlos Andrés Trujillo, boss of the powerful Itagüí group, grew his vote from 86.7k to nearly 160,000 with a good chunk of it outside Antioquia. Marcos Daniel Pineda, former two-term mayor of Montería (Córdoba) and son of retiring senator Nora García Burgos inherited his mother’s seat and grew the family’s vote from 96.9k to 153k. In addition, new machines came on board, most notably the Aguilar clan in Santander, which was with CR in 2018, won a seat with 78k for their candidate (José Alfredo Marín), who wasn’t a family member.
Thirdly, and more unexpectedly, the Conservatives also took in some right-wing ‘opinion’ votes. The major surprise came from Óscar Mauricio Giraldo, a businessman from Antioquia who campaigned on social conservatism as the ‘senator of the family’, without any machine support, and he got over 105,000 votes. This may be backlash to the recent decriminalization of abortion, or right-wingers who had voted for uribismo in 2018.
Despite these gains, the Conservatives did suffer some minor losses. The most notable quemado (defeated candidate) is Laureano ‘el gato volador’ Acuña, a deadweight senator infamously said to be the best vote buyer in Colombia — during the campaign a leaked recording of him talking about the need to buy 70,000 votes came out. However, his support fell to just 60,000 votes compared to 82,800 in 2018. Incidentally, La Silla Vacía’s Twitter stream during the election shared an audio recording of a vote buyer who was complaining that Acuña’s people weren’t keeping their word with them (not giving them the money) because he got ‘nervous’. The Conservatives also suffered losses in departments like Huila, where Esperanza Andrade (wife of former senator Hernán Andrade) didn’t get enough votes to hold her seat, and Valle del Cauca, where former governor Ubeimar Delgado didn’t win a seat.
The Liberals also did quite well, considering their numbers coming in: they won 12.6% and 2 million votes, up a bit from 1.9 million in 2018. It is all the more impressive considering several important incumbents were not seeking re-election and not leaving heirs behind in the party: Luis Fernando Velasco (now in the Pacto), Andrés Cristo (Juan Fernando Cristo’s brother), Guillermo García Realpe (supports Petro) and Rodrigo Villalba. César Gaviria’s strategy of betting heavily on existing, new and recycled traditional machine politicians and clans worked wonders: many incumbents or heirs significantly grew their votes from 2018, newly powerful groups like the governor of Sucre’s sister Karina Espinosa (she won 122k votes, ranking third among all Liberal candidate) and some representatives very successfully made the jump to the Senate, notably Norte de Santander’s Alejandro Carlos Chacón who got nearly 118,000 votes (over half of it from outside his department).
Lidio Arturo García Turbay was once again the party’s top ranked candidate with 157k, up from 117k in 2018: impressive given that in 2018 his cousin Dumek was governor of Bolívar, and while he still has quotas there, the current governor is the sister of Conservative senator Nadia Blel. Juan Pablo Gallo, former mayor of Pereira, won 134.5k votes, the second most of any Liberal candidate, boosting the Liberals to 34.6% of the vote in Risaralda, César Gaviria’s native department.
The Liberals also benefited from new ‘imported’ groups: Claudia Pérez Giraldo, out of nowhere, won over 110,000 votes (!) by inheriting the machine of her brother-in-law, former Partido de la U senator Eduardo Pulgar (currently in prison for bribing a judge), who managed her campaign from jail. The MCI evangelical church, owned by the Castellanos family, brought 63,000 votes for its candidate, Sara Castellanos (the daughter of the church’s owners, and outgoing CR senator Claudia Castellanos), although her seat is on a knife’s edge and could be lost if the Pacto gains its 20th seat in the final count. It wasn’t a particularly great result for the Castellanos family, and for the candidate herself who had clearly hoped to reach a broader electorate by promoting a citizen-initiated ‘referendum for life’ against the recent decriminalization of abortion.
While the centrist primary was self-inflicted disaster, the Greens-Centro Esperanza coalition did better than expected: 1.9 million votes, or 11.6%, up from 1.3 million in 2018 (when it was boosted by Mockus), giving them 13 seats, up 4. That is less than the number of votes in the centrist primary, but you cannot assume that everybody who voted in the primary voted for the list, or vice-versa.
There were several surprises, but one of the biggest surprises of the election was Jota Pe Hernández, a viral YouTuber/influencer who took the political world by surprise by winning 189,000 votes ‘out of nowhere’ — more than Humberto de la Calle (187,200), and the third most votes of any candidate on an open list this year. Nobody in the political world had heard of him, but he has 1.2 million followers on YouTube and 778,000 on Facebook, making ‘newscaster-style’ sensationalist and clickbait political videos attacking uribismo and corruption (although in the past he mostly made videos about Venezuelan politics with a strong anti-Maduro angle). He is an evangelical Christian who was a right-winger and uribista until recently — he says he’s a repented uribista whose politics have shifted, seemingly because of what he considers Duque’s broken promises and the protests. As some members of his own party, like defeated senator Antonio Sanguino, pointed to his old tweets espousing conservative viewpoints (on abortion, same-sex marriage) and supporting right-wing politicians, he needed to apologize for some of them.
His social media-driven campaign used simple populist, anti-establishment rhetoric against corruption and corrupt traditional politicians. The self-proclaimed ‘senator of the people’ won about 43,000 votes in his native department of Santander, and Rodolfo Hernández seems to have voted for him. He is the first social media ‘influencer’ to have been elected to Congress
The YouTuber beat out de la Calle in terms of votes, although de la Calle still won a lot (187k). Ariel Ávila, a political scientist/researcher active in the media and online, won the third most votes on the list with 97,000 votes, more than incumbent Green senator Angélica Lozano. The results also showed the growing power of certain ‘machines’ or, at least, existing political structures/networks: Jairo Alberto Castellanos in Norte de Santander inherited the Cristo family’s base (nationally he got 55.8k), former Caldas governor Guido Echeverri was elected with 53.5k votes and a strong result in Caldas and Carlos Amaya’s candidate Ana Carolina Espitia was elected with 54.2k votes (and a very strong result in Boyacá, beating out the department’s incumbent Green senators Sandra Ortiz and Jorge Londoño who both lost reelection). One left-wing petrista Green also made it in: Inti Asprilla (with 82k), while León Fredy Muñoz narrowly missed out on a seat on final numbers.
Among notable defeats were incumbent Green senators Sandra Ortiz, Jorge Londoño, Antonio Sanguino and Iván Marulanda as well Jorge Enrique Robledo’s main candidate Jorge Gómez, Mockus’ candidate Viviana Barberena, Ernesto Samper’s son Miguel Samper and former Bogotá councillor Juan Carlos Flórez.
The Centro Democrático suffered significant loses: it fell to just 11.4% and 13 seats (-6), and less than 1.9 million votes, the party’s worst result in the three congressional elections it has participated in since 2014.
To my surprise, Miguel Uribe Turbay, the top candidate, clearly beat María Fernanda Cabal, who had number 100, in their race to be the CD’s most popular candidate: Uribe Turbay got 223,000 votes against nearly 197,000 for Cabal (still a very good result for her). I underestimated the legitimist tendencies of uribistas to vote for el que dice Uribe (especially when he uses his paternal surname in prominent position). Former Casanare governor Alirio Barrera won 103,000 votes, and over half of it came from outside Casanare, which remained the CD’s strongest department with nearly 40% of the vote.
Some senators or representatives with stronger regional bases like Ciro Ramírez, Enrique Cabrales, Carlos Meisel, José Vicente Carreño, Honorio Henríquez Pinedo, Andrés Felipe Guerra, Esteban Quintero and Yenny Rozo won seats. On the other hand, some more prominent candidates were defeated: Santiago Valencia (incumbent senator and son of prominent former minister Fabio Valencia Cossio), Gabriel Velasco, Jonatan Tamayo ‘Manguito’ (the infamous nobody elected on Petro’s list in 2018 who turned out to be a right-winger) and Álvaro Hernán Prada (Álvaro Uribe’s co-accused in the witness tampering case). María Angélica Guerra, the niece of retiring prominent CD senator María del Rosario Guerra and daughter of Álvaro Uribe’s close friend Joselito Guerra de la Esperiella (former senator from one of the powerful political family dynasties in Sucre, convicted of illicit enrichment in the Proceso 8000), narrowly missed out on a seat, ranking fourteenth. In total, six incumbents lost reelection.
Edward Rodríguez, one of the few duquistas in Uribe’s party, suffered a crushing defeat: he won less than 18,000 votes. Already on bad terms with a lot of the party establishment before the election, he abruptly left the party caucus’ WhatsApp group after his defeat, and said that he was putting some ointment on himself for the bad ‘burn’ he just got.
Tellingly, the more influencer/internet bubble-type candidates did terribly: DJ Andrés Motta won just 7,600 votes, homophobic YouTuber Oswaldo Ortíz just 6,000 and the uncle of vallenato star Silvestre Dangond just 4,900. Uribismo without Uribe looks even more like a traditional party, with its regional factions and structures. Without Uribe leading the caucus, the smaller and weakened CD in the Senate will have several members competing for greater visibility and more of a leadership role: Miguel Uribe Turbay, with the new status as the party’s top vote-winner and perhaps Uribe’s implied blessing; María Fernanda Cabal for the radical right and ideologues; and incumbents like Paola Holguín (reelected with around 65,000 votes) and Paloma Valencia (reelected with around 63,000 votes) with a higher media profile. Uribismo, when Álvaro Uribe’s leadership was stronger and more active, was one of the most cohesive and internally disciplined parties in Colombia. Now that uribismo is weaker than it’s ever been, and with a high likelihood of recriminations by malcontents, it will also face more open internal conflicts. Already, Susana Correa, newly minted housing minister and former director of the Department of Social Prosperity (DPS), who controls a group of her own in Valle (which failed in its electoral aims this year), left the party on March 31 with a letter complaining that the party’s ideals have not been respected and that the personal interests of the leadership were previleged
The significant losses in the Senate, losing half their seats in the lower house, Zuluaga impulsively dropping out without negotiating anything in exchange with Fico, uribismo scrambling to retain shreds of relevance in a presidential campaign where they have at best a secondary role: all this combined shows how uribismo, once the dominant political force, is weaker than it has ever been (and no longer among the protagonists in the presidential contest).
Cambio Radical was another big loser: after its big success in 2018, it fell back to 11 seats (-5) and from 2.1 million to 1.58 million votes (or 9.9%). Charismo also came out disinflated from the elections, after having emerged as one of the largest political clans in Colombia with its own mini-caucus in 2018.
CR’s top candidate (and Vargas Lleras ally) David Luna won the most votes (112k), beating out Alex Char’s brother Arturo Char who won 102,000, which is about 24,500 fewer votes than in 2018. Moreover, two charista senatorial candidates lost: Fabián Castillo (incumbent) and more surprisingly, controversial Atlántico rep. César Lorduy, who won a bit less than 55,000 votes— even though Lorduy had the personal backing of Fuad Char, the clan’s patriarch. Only one other ‘core’ charista won, incumbent senator Antonio Zabaraín (famous for his bizarre, incoherent, intoxicated speech in Congress in 2018 which he blamed on a lack of oxygen in his brain), although other costeño charistas who are not part of the core family clan but allied to it did win, notably incumbent senator Ana María Castañeda. Along with Alex Char’s underperformance in the right’s primary, it was not a good election for charismo: the scandals and controversial political practices of the clan leave them more exposed than ever, having gotten a lot of negative national media scrutiny over the past few months.
Incumbent senators from other political groups in CR retained their seats, most notably Carlos Abraham Jiménez, who significantly increased his vote count to around 98,000, as well as Norte de Santander’s Édgar Díaz, who won about 85,000 votes. But, by and large, CR failed to make up for the loss of several of its senators (like Rodrigo Lara, the Aguilar clan or the MCI evangelicals). Besides Luna, all other ‘opinion’-type candidates like Yefer Vega, former prosecutor Claudia Carrasquilla and Camilo Trujillo (the son of former uribista politician and cabinet minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo, who passed away in 2021) lost: CR remains, by and large, a machine party. Other prominent losers included Temístocles Ortega, the ‘electoral baron’ of Cauca, who couldn’t resist the Pacto’s strong gains in the left-wing department and four-term senator Daira Galvis from Bolívar, the former lawyer of Enilce López ‘La Gata’ (a gambling entrepreneur convicted of murder and parapolítica), who knocked at the JEP’s door herself this year.
The Partido de la U, as expected, continued its slow decline: for the third election in a row, it has lost seats, now down another four to ten seats in the Senate, with its vote falling from 1.85 million to 1.5 million (or 9.1%). This was to be expected given the retiring or defected incumbents, so arguably the U did about as well as it could: its remaining machines still worked.
First and foremost, the structures of its leader and top baroness, Dilian Francisca Toro, who despite loses in the Valle still elected two senators (and three represntatives), including the party’s most voted candidate, Juan Carlos Garcés Rojas, who won 151k votes, as well as Norma Hurtado (third most votes with 128k). Unsurprisingly, Catherine Ibargüen, the faux fresh face for the party promoted by Toro, lost: she got just 42,700 votes.
In Córdoba, some of its factions returned with more force: Johnny Besaile, brother of the infamous Musa Besaile (in jail for bringing judges in the ‘cartel of the toga’ scandal) and Edwin Besaile (former governor removed from office for embezzlement in the ‘hemophilia cartel’ scandal and involved in other corruption scandals to steal healthcare funds), was reelected with more votes than in 2018, nearly 133,000. Julio Chagüi (husband of rep. Sara Piedrahita Lyons, the cousin of corrupt former governor Alejandro Lyons, who set up the aforementioned corruption network) was also elected with 79,000 votes. On the other hand, the Ñoñomanía faction of corrupt former senator Bernardo ‘El Ñoño’ Elías, convicted in the Odebrecht scandal, again failed to return to the Senate: his brother Julio Elías Vidal lost.
All senators elected are either incumbent or former congressmen (in either house), including José David Name (of the old Name clan of the Atlántico) and José Alfredo Gnecco (of the infamous Gnecco clan of Cesar), and newcomers others like La Guajira rep. Alfredo Deluque (who jumped from the House and gave the department a senator) and the return of former senator Antonio Correa Jiménez (former senator for the defunct trash collector party Opción Ciudadana who is close to the ‘La Gata’ clan). According to the magazine Cambio, seven of the party’s ten senators “have dark and problematic pasts and presents: from alliances with convicted parapolíticos to accusations of corruption”.
The elections turned out to be a major disappointment for the coalition between the Christian evangelical parties MIRA and Colombia Justa Libres: whereas separately they had collectively elected 6 senators with over 900,000 votes in 2018, this year as a single coalition they fell to 564,000 (3.3%), barely passing the threshold to elect only four senators. It’s interesting that three of the four senators are from the MIRA (Ana Paola Agudelo, Carlos Eduardo Guevara and Manuel Virgüez Piraquive), although the candidate who won the most votes, Lorena Ríos, is from CJL (she won 62k, the three successful MIRA candidates got between 50 and 58k each): it would suggest that the MIRA’s more disciplined vote turned out better for the list, while divided CJL didn’t ‘put’ as many votes.
Fuerza Ciudadana narrowly missed out on the threshold. Initially, Petro was angry with Carlos Caicedo’s left-wing movement for splitting the vote and depriving the Pacto of more seats, although as the focus shifted to the preconteo fiasco, Petro became more magnanimous and told his scrutineers to also help Fuerza Ciudadana find its vote, as some of the party’s candidates insisted they had also been ‘robbed’ of many votes which would take them over the threshold. In their case, it turned out to be false. Fuerza Ciudadana got 417,000 votes (2.5%), about a fifth of them from Magdalena, where the list finished second with 17%. The party’s top candidate, Gilberto Tobón (academic and political commentator on Twitter), won 173,500 votes — more than many victorious candidates and probably a record for the most votes for a defeated candidate. Hollman Morris, on the other hand, won only 9,500 votes.
The election was a real disappointment and disillusion for Nuevo Liberalismo. Clearly, the Galán name and logo isn’t worth as much in 2022 as it was in the 1980s. The closed list won over 350,000 votes, just 2.1%, quite a distance from the threshold, when many had expected them to do much better than that. It’s telling that about 45% of all its votes came from Bogotá, where it won over 5% (and elected one representative). Moreover, even if all of Galán’s voters in the primary had voted for his party’s list, they would still have not made it in. They’ll retain their party status exceptionally even as they failed to meet the threshold, but it’s really not a good start for them and they will need to rethink their strategies — perhaps listen to the criticisms of some Nuevo Liberalismo veterans and others who have called the reborn party a Galán family clique.
It also wasn’t a great result for Estamos Listas, the feminist collective, who only got 0.7% (108k votes), although I guess 108k votes is not a terribly bad result for a new and unusual political movement which also never got the public funding it was entitled to… Estamos Listas probably got too ambitious after their electoral debut in 2019 (winning one seat in Medellín) and tried to rise to the top too quickly.
It was an absolutely disastrous result for the ex-FARC Comunes who won only 25,000 votes, down from 52,500 votes in 2018 (already disastrous). They still get their 10 seats in Congress, but this is their last term with this benefit, so it really doesn’t smell good for their long-term future after 2026…
The results at the bottom of the pack for the alvarista MSN and ‘the witch’ Regina 11’s movement — 30,000 and 12,000 votes only — show that 1990s politics are dead and buried in Colombia, and that alvarismo/laureanismo conservatism is nothing now.
House of Representatives results
The results for the House of Representatives have not been the object of as much controversy, although it appears that in some departments, the Pacto Histórico’s votes may also have been underreported in the preliminary count.
It is more complicated to get a clear national picture of the lower house because of the proliferation of different coalitions between parties in many departments. In the above table, I have rearranged the labels and local coalitions with their respective parties. Errors are possible and some changes are likely with final counts.
The broad conclusions for the senatorial elections also apply here, just perhaps further amplified by the electoral system and effects of district magnitude. The Pacto, Conservatives, Liberals and Greens are the main winners. The CD, CR and La U are the main losers.
The Pacto Histórico managed to do surprisingly well and they were actually quite efficient at winning seats in many departments, both in larger ones with more seats but also smaller ones with only a few representatives. The Pacto elected representatives in 13 departments and the international constituency. They will be the second largest group in the House, including the indigenous representative from MAIS, with 28 seats. They won very impressive numbers in Bogotá (32% and 7 seats) and Valle (26% and 5 seats). The result in Bogotá is truly impressive for the left: the Pacto clearly won the battle for Bogotá, hands down, by miles over everyone else. Even in Antioquia they won 12.7% and 3 seats (the final count gave them a third seat at the expensive of the CD). They won over 35% in Cauca, taking two of the four seats in that department, and also won seats in the southern departments of Huila, Nariño and Putumayo. In the Caribbean region, where the Pacto had been aiming to do well, they won a seat in Atlántico (with 15.7%) and Bolívar (with 11.5%).
Perhaps one of the funniest cases of the Pacto’s unexpected success in the lower house is Santander, where there was a ‘rogue’ Pacto Histórico list with only one (little-known) candidate who barely campaigned, after the Pacto had wanted to run a list with the Greens, and where Petro asked his voters to vote for the Green list there — well, the ‘rogue’ Pacto, still won 9% and 1 seat in Santander thanks to the logo!
The Pacto also won the expat seat (international constituency) with 31.6% against 24.3% for the CD, defeating the uribista (and trumpista) incumbent Juan David Vélez.
As in the Senate, the Pacto Histórico’s caucus in the lower house will represent the different sectors included in the left-wing coalition including Gustavo Petro’s own Colombia Humana, spearheaded by David Racero (incumbent representative who led the list in Bogotá), the Polo (with 9–10 seats including former representative Alirio Uribe in Bogotá and former Medellín councillor Luz María Múnera in Antioquia), Roy Barreras (his wife won a seat in Valle), the UP, the MAIS, Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero (Alejo Toro, a strong supporter of his, won a seat in Antioquia) — as well as political newcomers including ‘Susana Boreal’ (a young musician elected in Antioquia), María Fernanda Carrascal (online activist and influencer elected in Bogotá), José Alberto Tejada (journalist elected in Valle) and Agmeth Escaf (former TV presenter elected in Atlántico, controversial because of his proximity to charismo and business tycoon Christian Daes in the past). Not as many of the Pacto’s representatives will be women (9–10), but the Pacto will bring greater diversity in the House: Dorina Hernández, elected in Bolívar, will be the first Palenquera in the House, while Karmen Ramírez Boscán, elected in the international constituency, will be the second Wayúu woman ever elected to the lower house.
The Liberals did suffer some minor losses (and some gains elsewhere) but they ‘won’ by remaining the single largest party in the House, and in being the party with the broadest geographical representation — with seats in 27 departments. Again, a lot of that came the expense of principles and ideological coherence, but that hardly matters. Most of the Liberal gains came from the Caribbean: winning a seat in Sucre and Cesar, and gaining a seat in Atlántico (for a total of 2). Incumbent representative Jezmi Barraza (Atlántico) was the Liberal candidate with the most votes anywhere, with nearly 88,000 votes: she is the daughter of a local gamonal in Soledad who was allied with the criminal Pulgar clan. These gains came thanks to new alliances with local political groups: the Torres clan in Puerto Colombia (Atlántico), the son of outgoing CR rep. Eloy ‘Chichí’ Quintero in Cesar was elected as a Liberal as well as the strength of the Liberal governor of Sucre Héctor Olimpo Espinosa (whose sister was elected to the Senate). The party, on the other hand, saw some significant losses in Santander (-2) and Valle (-2). In Valle, Juan Fernando Reyes Kuri, a progressive liberal, lost his seat. In Bogotá, the Liberals won only 5.5%, and Juan Carlos Lozada held his seat, beating out the candidate of the MCI evangelicals, Clara Lucía Sandoval.
The Conservatives made substantial gains in the House as well, gaining 6 seats from the 2018 result. A lot of that was thanks to being further strengthened in their current strongholds, like Bolívar where they achieved their goal of winning 4 seats (+2) with the strength of the Blel and Montes clans (two groups originally led by convicted parapolíticos), Tolima where they won 3 seats (+1) and Córdoba where they now have two seats (including David Barguil’s cousin Nicolás, who won 89k votes). The Conservatives also gained seats in Boyacá, Caquetá, Cesar, Guaviare, Santander and Sucre. These gains came thanks to the support of governors’ and mayors’ structures (in Caquetá, Santander, Guaviare, as well as the mayoralty of Sincelejo in Sucre) and alliances with local political groups (in Santander, Luis Eduardo Díaz Mateus, the brother of former senator Iván Díaz Mateus, convicted in the Yidispolítica scandal, was allied with the Aguilar clan, who are now with the Conservatives).
This made up for some losses elsewhere, like in the Valle, Risaralda and Huila, where they lost their only seats. In Bogotá, the Conservatives in coalition with the Partido de la U held their seat, winning just 4.3% of the vote.
On the other hand, things weren’t so good for Cambio Radical, which fell from 30 seats to just 18 seats. They lost seats in Atlántico (where they won 3, down from 4), Bogotá (reduced to one, but was to be expected), Bolívar (lost both, one incumbent jumped to the Senate but Karen Cure, ally of the ‘La Gata’ criminal enterprise/clan and charismo, lost), Boyacá, Caldas, Cesar, Cundinamarca, Magdalena, Santander, Sucre and Tolima. Some of these losses had to do with clans shifting their partisan labels (in Cesar, CR rep. Eloy ‘Chichí’ Quintero had his son elected as a Liberal, for example) or the weakening of the machines tied to CR in 2018 (like in Sucre, where they lost both seats).
In Bogotá, CR’s seat was won by former city councillor Carolina Arbeláez rather than the incumbent José Daniel López, one of the more liberal/progressive members of CR.
The lower house results were a brutal debacle for the Centro Democrático, which lost half of its seats — from 32 to 15. The uribista defeats came from many places: in Antioquia, where they held 7 seats, they lost three (although they remained the largest party, albeit with only 21% now), they were wiped out in all three departments of the Eje Cafetero, in Bogotá they lost 3 seats (from 5 to 2) as they fell into third place, they lost both of their seats in Cundinamarca and even in the traditionally uribista Orinoquía/Llanos Orientales they lost seats in Arauca, Meta and Vichada. They did, however, win a seat in Magdalena for the first time (with the winner being a candidate backed by the powerful Dávila Abondano family of landowners/agroindustrialists). The CD is now represented in only 11 departments of the country. In Bogotá, the CD fell from 20% to just 11% and lost three of its five seats. Among those defeated was Gabriel Santos, the ‘maverick’ congressman who stood out by sometimes challenging uribista orthodoxy.
The Partido de la U slipped even further in the lower house, losing seats for the third election in a row. It now holds 16 seats in the House. It lost its only seats in places like Antioquia, Atlántico, Caldas, Bolívar (with the defeat of the candidate of the old but weakened García Zuccardi clan), Cauca, and even in strongholds like Cesar, Córdoba and Valle it lost a seat. As with CR, some of these losses have to do with clans shifting their partisan labels like in Antioquia, Atlántico and Caldas. It was in Córdoba, nevertheless, that the country’s second-most popular candidate was elected: former miss Córdoba Saray Elena Robayo, cousin of outgoing rep. Erasmo Zuleta and fórmula of the Besaile clan (Zuleta’s sister is married to corrupt former governor Edwin Besaile), won 115,900 votes. Dilian Francisca Toro’s strength remained obvious in the Valle: she elected three of her four candidates for the House, although the Pacto Histórico won a major victory in the department.
As in the Senate, the Partido de la U’s caucus is a real who’s who of some of the most controversial and corrupt clans — like in Sucre, where ex-Opción Ciudadana incumbent Milene Jarava, wife of the very corrupt and controversial/professional vote buyer Yahir Acuña, was easily reelected with the U’s blessing.
The Greens, who ran alone separately from the Centro Esperanza (or even in coalition with the Pacto in some places), were also among the winners in the House: including those Greens elected in coalition with the Pacto or other left-wing parties, they have 15 seats, up 5 from 2018. They are now represented in 10 departments, double the amount from 2018. They gained seats in departments where ‘alternative’ candidates did well in 2018–9, like Caldas (the winner is the cousin of the Green mayor of Manizales), Risaralda (winning two seats, in coalition with the Polo, with 18%) and Meta but also in other places like Tolima (in coalition with the Pacto: thankfully the Green candidate won, instead of the Pacto’s candidate, who came from a traditional political clan). In Antioquia, they picked up a second seat.
Their only weakness was Bogotá, where they lost a seat, although they still won 3 seats and are the second strongest party after the Pacto, with over 15% of the vote. Incumbent representative Katherine Miranda, who knows how to go viral and attract media attention, became the most voted candidate in Colombia with nearly 119,000 preferential votes. Incumbent representative Mauricio Toro, a very good representative, lost his seat in Bogotá — it went to Olga Lucía Velásquez, a former Liberal congresswoman with past ties to the corrupt Moreno administration. Toro kind of blamed Green senator Angélica Lozano for his defeat, saying that she pushed for Velásquez to be on the Green list. Jorge Torres, the candidate endorsed by Antanas Mockus, was also defeated. The Greens also won a seat in the surrounding department of Cundinamarca, which will be held by Liliana Rodríguez, who controversially supported Iván Duque four years ago and benefited from the support of the mayor of Soacha (facing allegations of irregularities).
The Greens held their seat in Santander — with Cristian Avendaño, a student, soundly beating Luz Dana Leal, the wife of the little-known but powerful (and controversial) national co-president of the party Carlos Ramón González (who supports Petro). In Valle, the party’s seat was won by Duvalier Sánchez, who defeated candidates close to the unpopular mayor of Cali, Jorge Iván Ospina.
The Centro Esperanza, separate from the Greens, won two seats — one in Bogotá and one in Antioquia with 6.5% and 6.7% of the vote respectively. In Bogotá, student leader Jennifer Pedraza won the lone victory for Jorge Enrique Robledo’s new party Dignidad, as she got about 600 more votes than Anastasia Rubio Betancourt (Ingrid Betancourt’s young niece). In Antioquia, the seat went to former Medellín councillor Daniel Carvalho, who has Rasta dreadlocks (he was Humberto de la Calle’s fórmula, and endorsed by Fajardo and his daughter). Elsewhere, the Centro Esperanza minus the Greens didn’t do very well: 2.1% in Valle, 4% in Santander, 1.7% in Tolima, 2.4% in Cundinamarca…
The Nuevo Liberalismo kind of saved face by winning two seats in the House — one through a coalition in Caldas. In Bogotá, they won 7.3% — finishing ahead of the Liberals, perhaps a silver lining for them — and one seat, which will be held by former National Parks director Julia Miranda. The seat won by the Juntos por Caldas (NL-Dignidad-ASI-MIRA) coalition in, well, Caldas, went to a candidate endorsed and ‘claimed’ by Nuevo Liberalismo.
Rodolfo Hernández’s Liga confirmed its strength in Santander, the only place where it was on the ballot, by topping the polls there with nearly 21% and 166,900 votes (significantly more than the 80k its list for the departmental assembly won in 2019), getting two seats. In contradiction with what their leader preaches, both representatives-elect have recent and personal ties with the traditional politics that Rodolfo has branded as corrupt: the top candidate, Érika Tatiana Sánchez is the ‘quota’ of convicted (corrupt) former governor Mario Camacho (who is an old friend of Rodolfo) and outgoing Liberal representative Édgar ‘el Pote’ Gómez. As recently as 2019, she worked for the mayoral campaign of a candidate supported by traditional politicians who Rodolfo had called corrupt. The Liga’s success (as well as that of the Greens and Pacto) in Santander cost two seats to the Liberals and a seat to CR and uribismo.
The lower house elections confirmed how this election was a real flop for the Christian evangelicals. In coalition with CJL, MIRA was only able to hold its lone seat in Bogotá — with 5% of the vote — while CJL didn’t win anything. Separately, the two had won around 10% in 2018 and one seat each. In the Valle, which was low hanging fruit for them (especially by running united), they failed to win a seat.
Gente en Movimiento, the movement which topped the poll in Caldas with 15.8% (and 1 seat), is the new movement of former Partido de la U senator Mauricio Lizcano (the son of outgoing Partido de la U rep. Óscar Tulio Lizcano), a traditional politician (with his share of scandals and skeletons) who has tried to appear more ‘alternative’ since 2019 — Lizcano’s faction allied with the Greens to win Manizales and the Caldas governorship in 2019.
Carlos Caicedo’s Fuerza Ciudadana won a seat in Magdalena with 14% of the vote. The seat will go to Caicedo’s former private secretary.
Colombia Renaciente, a party created by having won one of the Afro seats in 2018 and which is part of the Centro Esperanza coalition, won a seat on its own in La Guajira. Its sole representative is the cousin of former governor and convicted murderer Kiko Gómez.
The Afro seats, once again (as in 2010 and 2014, less so in 2018), ended as a tragic farce. The first seat was won by a list which won 13.1% and it will go to Ana Monsalve, the sister of the mayor of Malambo (Atlántico), who beat Edison Massa, former mayoral candidate in Puerto Colombia (Atlántico) on the same list, to win the seat. Monsalve’s brother was elected mayor of Malambo in 2019 with the support of Conservative senator Laureano Acuña, famous for buying votes and dancing shirtless and drunk, but seems to have betrayed him, so Ana Monsalve’s candidacy was organized and supported by another powerful cacique, U senator José David Name (current leader of the old Name family) — as well as her brother’s administration of course — while Acuña supported Massa (as he had in 2019). She won 21,500 of her 26,200 votes in Atlántico, giving her the seat. Controversially, Monsalve self-identified and was recognized as a member of an indigenous community.
The other seat, in the pre-count, appeared to have been won by controversial far-right uribista YouTuber/influencer Miguel Polo Polo, supported by CD senator María Fernanda Cabal. His closed list won 35,200 votes (7.4%), most of those votes came from major cities or even abroad, with the support of Cabal’s far-right circles. Polo Polo immediately sparked controversy and debate after a radio interview in which he said that he won’t defend Afro-Colombian communities’ collective rights, that he ran for the Afro seat (much easier to win) because he felt like it and that anybody who perceives themselves as black can be considered black (even, he said, his interviewer, who had “Aryan features”). It was later revealed that, in 2019, Polo was officially recognized as indigenous (and now, two years later, as Afro-Colombian), allegedly in order to obtain a scholarship (a claim which he says is false).
However, as Polo Polo said on Twitter, during the final count more votes appeared in Buenaventura (Valle) which gave the seat to Lina Martínez. Martínez is the daughter of convicted parapolítico/former senator Juan Carlos ‘el Negro’ Martínez. In leaked audio recordings, Laureano Acuña talked about negotiating some 20–25,000 votes with Martínez to help his daughter. Since he was released from prison about five years ago, Martínez has been trying to regain his political influence and power — he was unsuccessful in 2018, but appears to have been successful this year.
The list supported by Francia Márquez’s movement Soy Porque Somos only finished fourth.
The Afro-Colombian seats are highly sought after because they come with a very attractive reward for the winners: the movements which endorsed them will automatically be legally recognized as political parties and become coveted ‘endorsement factories’ in next year’s local elections.
For the first time this year, 16 additional members were elected to represent victims of the armed conflict, in 16 different single-member transitional constituencies (Citrep) in the regions most affected by the conflict (somewhat controversially, only residents of rural areas could vote). Candidates needed to be certified victims of the conflict and political parties could not run for these seats — candidates could only be endorsed by victims’ organizations, social movements, peasants’ organizations, groups of citizens, Afro-Colombian community councils and indigenous reserves and authorities (see the full text of the relevant constitutional provisions). In theory, these seats are meant to give a voice to the victims of the conflict and provide greater representation to marginalized, peripheral regions that suffered the most from the conflict and have been ignored or abandoned by the state. Of course, the theory doesn’t often match with the reality in Colombia, and the first elections for the Citrep ran into a multitude of problems including continued violence, the weak presence of the state, threats against candidates and community organizers and the dynamics of illegal economies in these regions. Politically, the greatest risk was that the seats would be ‘coopted’ by local traditional political clans or other candidates who don’t genuinely represent victims’ interests.
At least in some of the sixteen constituencies, that’s exactly what happened. According to La Silla Vacía, 9 of the 16 winners face some sort of controversy and/or have ties to politicians or political groups. Pares counts six winners as cuestionados (facing some kind of controversy, directly or indirectly).
Undoubtedly the most egregious case is Jorge Rodrigo Tovar, who won in the Sierra Nevada-Perijá constituency (Citrep-12). Tovar is the son of bloodthirsty paramilitary commander ‘Jorge 40’, who was expelled from transitional justice, extradited to the US in 2008 and deported back to Colombia in 2020 and who is accused of homicides, massacres, drug trafficking and other major human rights abuses. His son has worked in the public sector, including in the interior ministry, on issues related to victims and partook in truth and reconciliation initiatives, but his candidacy was criticized not only because of his father but also because of alleged conflicts of interest (the Cesar territorial victims’ unit’s offices are leased from Tovar’s mother) and accusations that the territorial victims’ unit (headed by a former uribista candidate) was favouring his candidacy. Other candidates also felt that Tovar was behind the intimidation and threats that prevented them from campaigning in certain areas (in protest, 17 of them dropped out shortly before the election). Tovar won the seat with a majority of over 8,600 votes over a list led by another controversial candidate, close to the Gnecco clan.
The 14th constituency (southern Córdoba) was won by Leónor Palencia, the cousin of the Liberal governor of Córdoba, Orlando Benítez. She has no track record as a community leader or advocating for victims. Citrep-6 (Chocó), the seat was won by James Hemeregildo Mosquera, the lawyer for former governor Patrocinio Sánchez Montes de Oca, convicted of embezzlement in 2010 and one of the leaders of the Montes de Oca clan (his brother was convicted of parapolítica, his sister was reelected representative for the Partido de la U). He managed to be certified as a victim in just 20 days after having claimed to have received threats from a ‘guerrilla group’ just a month before the candidacy registration period, which certainly raises some questions. The winner in Citrep-10 (Pacific coast of Nariño), Gerson Montaño, a victim of forced displacement, was supported by Neftalí Correa, the ‘electoral baron’ of Tumaco currently disqualified from holding public office for irregularities in public procurement while he was mayor.
There are, to be sure, other winners who appear to be more ‘genuine’ and recognized advocates for victims’ rights in their regions. Their mere presence, even amidst other winners with ties to political clans, will hopefully help provide a much needed voice to victims of the conflict and the oft-forgotten regions which suffered so much from the horrors of war.
Taking stock
What will the next Congress look like? What kind of Congress will the next president need to deal with?
The new Congress will be more balanced between the left and right, although with the right still the strongest. The new Congress will have several new faces and more diversity, but also a lot of incumbents and career politicians.
The outgoing Congress was dominated by traditional/neo-traditional parties and leaned clearly to the right. The incoming Congress will be more balanced.
The left (Pacto, indigenous, Comunes) will have at least 27 seats in the Senate and 35 seats in the House, plus 13 senators and 19 representatives for the centre-left (Greens and Centro Esperanza). The right (Conservatives, CD, Christians) will have 32 senators and 43 representatives. The centre-right CR and Partido de la U have announced that they will act a single bloc in the next Congress and this centre-right bloc will have 21 senators and 34 representatives. The Liberal Party (14 senators & 33 representatives) will remain key to forming a stable, majority coalition in Congress, as the two pie charts above show.
In contrast, in the outgoing Congress the right and centre-right together controlled a comfortable absolute majority in both houses. In contrast, the right and centre-right together no longer control an absolute majority in the new Congress, although they are still the strongest force — 53 senators and 77 representatives, at least. The left and centre-left are significantly stronger in the new Congress with 40 senators and 50 representatives, but still some distance from a majority in either house. Hence the Liberal Party being kingmaker.
What does this mean for the next President? None of the candidates would automatically have a congressional majority (an absolute majority will require 55 senators and 94 representatives), but Fico would have the easiest path towards one.
Petro could count on the 40 senators and 50 representatives of the left and centre-left (Greens-CE), but would absolutely need the support of the Liberals in both houses to have a congressional majority.
Fico would come very close to an absolute majority in the Senate with the right and centre-right’s 53 seats, but would need to find more allies in the House. In any case, he too would likely find himself needing much of the Liberal caucuses in both houses to have a stable congressional majority.
Fajardo, given his reluctance to engage in traditional political dealmaking to form congressional coalitions, would have a more difficult time putting together a coalition. He will point out that he managed to govern successfully in Medellín and Antioquia without forming any coalitions, and instead working with all parties on individual, case-by-case bases. This might not be as easily done nationally, however.
The new Congress will have a mix of new faces and some old-timers, including experienced legislators and career politicians. According to my own calculations for the Senate (mistakes are possible), 47 senators were reelected and three former senators will be returning after being away for one or more term. 18 jumped from the House to the Senate and at least five new senators can be considered, directly or indirectly, as heirs of an outgoing incumbent. 34 senators are newcomers, although some have political connections to an incumbent and others are already veteran politicians. The degree of ‘renewal’ (newcomers) varies significantly by party: the indigenous seats (100%), Greens-CE (69.2%) and Pacto (55%) have the highest percentage of newcomers in their caucuses. The Conservatives, Liberals, CR and La U have the lowest percentage of newcomers — 13.3%, 14.3%, 9.1% and 10% respectively. 30.8% of the CD’s new caucus are newcomers, and the CD had the most defeated incumbents (6).
Conclusions
The March 13 presidential primaries and congressional elections served as a kind of unofficial presidential first round: clearing out the presidential field and choosing the Congress which the next president will need to deal with.
Following the presidential primaries, the crowded field was narrowed down to eight final candidates: the three primary winners and five other candidates. The three primary winners, particularly Petro and Fico, are those with the best chances of being elected President of Colombia in June (probably not in May).
Petro and Fico emerged dominant and strengthened from their primaries, and they are the frontrunners in what is increasingly shaping up to be a left vs. right battle with a weak centre. Petro, with 5.58 million votes for the Pacto Histórico in the primaries and the largest caucus in the Senate, leads a left that is stronger than ever before and which, for the first time ever, has a good chance of winning the presidency — a remarkable historic achievement for the Colombian left. Fico won his primary decisively with over 2.1 million votes and it has allowed him to unite and consolidate the right behind him. It is a different right, in which uribismo is isolated and marginalized rather than predominant (as in 2018). Both candidates need to expand their base beyond their ideological cores, and need to be mindful of their respective weaknesses.
Sergio Fajardo hopes that after coming so close to qualifying for the runoff in 2018, he will actually do so in 2022. However, after the Centro Esperanza primary was such a flop, he desperately needs to appear relevant and viable in the presidential campaign and fight, at all costs, the perception that it is ‘Petro vs. Fico’.
The other five candidates who didn’t participate in the primaries are in much weaker positions. Rodolfo Hernández is the only one among them who has an (outside) chance of becoming a plausible challenger to the frontrunners (Petro and Fico).
The congressional elections had many winners and losers. But perhaps the biggest loser wasn’t even on the ballot: the legitimacy and credibility of the electoral system and the electoral institutions, after the pre-count fiasco. Trust in the electoral system and the institutions was low to begin with, but the mismanagement and incompetence of Alexander Vega, the head of the Registraduría, made things much worse. The electoral crisis allowed for candidates and parties to spread rumours about fraud and other irregularities, including unfounded conspiracy theories and proclamations of not recognizing the results.
The other main loser of the election was uribismo. In 2018, it was the protagonist (and the winner) and Álvaro Uribe— love or hate — was the dominant figure in every election since 2002. This year is so different: the election doesn’t revolve around Uribe and uribismo is weaker than ever before, as well as politically isolated and marginalized. The party won’t have a presidential candidate of its own, and it will support Fico without getting anything in exchange from him — and even if Fico has uribista sympathies and could be considered to be ‘Duque 2.0’, he won’t follow the old uribista playbook in his campaign and he will not campaign exclusively on its old core issues. In Congress, the CD fell from the largest party in the Senate to only the fifth strongest and it lost half of its seats in the House.
The strengthened left and the fall of uribismo suggests that this could be a real turning point in Colombian politics — a realigning election? Not the end of the political polarization which has kind of dominated its politics since the Uribe/Santos divorce, but the emergence of new political dynamics where the left is stronger and the right is not synonymous with Uribe. In addition, while the congressional elections showed that the infamous ‘machine politics’ that have been a big issue in the campaign remain quite strong, dominant in many places, there are signs of change, continuing a trend which was visible in 2018 and 2019.
